My phone buzzed against the counter. It was Caroline.
“Hey, Mare,” my sister said when I picked up after moving to the hallway. “How was the birthday dinner?”
“Quiet. Richard barely looked at him,” I said softly.
“Mary.” Caroline’s voice dipped. “I don’t like the way he talks to that boy. I’ve been saying it for years.”
“He’s just old-fashioned, Carrie.”
“Old-fashioned is calling someone ‘son.’ What Richard does is something else.”
I glanced toward the stairs and lowered my voice. “I can’t get into this right now.”
“You never can.” She sighed. “Just promise me you’ll watch him. Ethan, I mean.”
“I always watch him.”
“I know you do.” A pause. “I love you, okay? Call me later.”
I hung up, returned to where my son was sitting, and looked at him. Ethan was drawing something on the back of a flyer, the pencil moving in those careful loops he’d made since kindergarten.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just a bird. Nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing. It’s beautiful.”
My son shrugged, but a small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. For a second, the kitchen felt as if it belonged to us again.
Then I heard Richard’s footsteps on the stairs. Heavy, deliberate, the way they always sounded when he’d already decided something.
